Finally, service from Always In Service

The company fixed its poor work and offered a refund on the job.

Always In Service appears to be picking up its service after being written up by the Watchdog.

The Montgomery County locksmith and door company, which was sued by the state attorney general's office, contacted two dissatisfied Lehigh Valley customers after my column last Sunday.

Frank Geosits Sr. of Northampton, who had tipped me off to the trouble Always In Service was causing, got his poorly installed kitchen door fixed and a $1,700 refund. In exchange, he agreed to waive any future claims against the company, including seeking restitution through the attorney general's lawsuit.

"After months of trying to get in touch with someone reputable at Always In Service and failing, one article in the newspaper and the next day there is no more situation. It's fixed," Geosits's daughter, Sharon, told me by e-mail. "I guess that's the power of the press at work."

Geosits's son, Frank Geosits Jr., said a supervisor came to his dad's home and fixed the door. He said the supervisor told him the two workers who initially had done the job no longer work for the company.

"He apologized several times," Geosits Jr. said.

Larry Geiger of Upper Macungie Township said Always In Service also called him, in what he assumes was an attempt to respond to his complaint about trouble he had with a garage door repair. But he was so fed up he wasn't in a listening mood when the phone rang last Sunday.

"A real pleasant lady called and said this is Always In Service. As soon as I heard that I gave her a piece of my mind. I wouldn't even talk to her," Geiger told me.

He'd tried desperately to reach the company earlier this month. He said he paid Always In Service $267 on Oct. 3 to replace a spring on his double garage door. Six days later, he said, the door wouldn't close.

When Geiger called to report the problem, he said the company told him it couldn't do anything about it immediately because the worker who had installed the new spring would have to take care of it, and he was off for the weekend.

Geiger wasn't about to take that for an answer, as his garage door was stuck open and rain was expected. But he said several other calls to Always In Service also failed.

"It was unbelievable the phony excuses they gave for not coming back," Geiger told me. "They finally told me someone would call me the next morning, which was Monday. Of course no one called."

So he called another company, which repaired the door a few days later for another $146.

Always In Service's attempts to appease people obviously don't apply to me, as the company continues to ignore my calls. I wanted to ask about Geiger and a few other customers, including Lois Bachman of Allentown.

She said she contacted Always In Service in September and got an over-the-phone estimate of $130 to fix her garage door. The repair cost $925, and she said she didn't get the senior discount she'd seen in the phone book ad. Bachman said her son tried contacting the company to ask about the disparity, but never got a call back. Bachman is disputing the charge through her credit card, and said she would be contacting the attorney general's office.

Inflating prices is one of the accusations in the attorney general's lawsuit against Always In Service.

The suit, filed about two weeks ago in Philadelphia, alleges the company misrepresented itself as a host of local locksmiths and door and window companies in phone books in several counties, including Northampton, Berks, Bucks and Montgomery.

Those ads included local phone numbers to trick people into thinking the companies were local, the attorney general's office said. But the lawsuit says all 300-plus phone numbers the company published under at least 16 company names went to the same place, the Always In Service office in Abington, Montgomery County.

Geosits reached Always In Service when he called a phone book listing for Lehigh Valley Doors. The ad lists numbers for Allentown, Northampton, Bethlehem, Hellertown, Easton and Nazareth, but all lead to Always In Service.

The lawsuit, which is on my blog at http://blogs.mcall.com/watchdog/, accuses Always In Service of misleading customers into believing it was a company near their home; inflating estimated prices; failing to provide itemized bills; doing poor work; and not doing work that was paid for.

Authorities say Always In Service lied about being accredited by the Better Business Bureau, employing certified master locksmiths and being family owned and operated.

If you believe you were ripped off by Always In Service, contact the attorney general's office at 800-441-2555 or http://www.attorneygeneral.gov.

The Watchdog is published Thursdays and Sundays. Contact me by e-mail at watchdog@mcall.com, by phone at 610-841-2364 (ADOG), by fax at 610-820-6693, or by mail at The Morning Call, 101 N. Sixth St., Allentown, PA, 18101. Follow me on Twitter at mcwatchdog.